


laugh until our ribs get tough.

by mihkrokosmos



Series: you know it all, you’re my best friend. [1]
Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Fluff, M/M, Sad Han Jisung | Han, Unrequited Love, but it basically is, but soft angst, commas hate me, except it isn’t, gentle angst, i’m sorry jisung, lapslock, oh that’s a bad tag, run on sentences for days, this is all jisung’s pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2020-02-04 17:27:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18609160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mihkrokosmos/pseuds/mihkrokosmos
Summary: love confessions in a small town during a hazy summer, and then the autumn wind brings the chill.





	laugh until our ribs get tough.

**Author's Note:**

> this is also posted on twitter (LGBTMINH0) but i’m posting it on ao3 too bc i can!! also unbetaed bc i’m a bad bitch and also ,, v v lazy ,, anyway it’s loosely based on ribs by lorde which is lowkey a sad song so :)

the summer air is static. it clings to jisung’s skin, snaking under the heavy sweater that he had insisted on wearing in a moment of teenage pretentiousness. a day would come where he would not fall victim to an overdone aesthetic — that was not today, though.

overhead, the ceiling fan does its best to combat the suffocating humidity. still, it’s just a rickety ceiling fan, not a miracle worker. the whirring of the blades serves as background noise more than anything else. jisung’s kinda surprised the contraption isn’t dead by now. he’s also kinda surprised that minho’s room even has a fan. their tiny town wasn’t exactly well equipped for sudden heatwaves. jisung would know; he hadn’t been able to find a single handheld fan in his house. maybe that was ‘cause it was a mess, though.

… yeah, that was probably it.

there’s a wasp (or a bee, but jisung’s betting on a wasp) somewhere nearby. he can hear it buzzing. he vaguely wonders if he’s just hallucinating.

that’s what happens in the desert, right? because it’s too hot, or something.

“it happens because of sleep deprivation, dumbass.”

jisung, afterwards, would swear that his heart literally stopped. in the moment, however, he lazily rolls over to face minho. it takes a little more effort than he would’ve liked — their limbs are tangled together, despite the heat, and jisung is uncomfortably close to the edge of the bed — but they manage.

“since when could you read minds?” jisung demands, because he’s sixteen and tired and has really stupid moments. let him live.

minho squints.

“jisung, you said that out loud.”

his tone is dripping with exasperated judgement. it’s the tone he uses when someone asks him the time during class when there’s already a huge ass clock on the wall. it’s also the tone he uses when someone bumps into him and barely apologises.

last of all, it’s the tone he uses when he’s got something else on his mind. jisung isn’t sure what that could be, because minho’s eighteen and tired and has really stupid moments.

a hush falls over the room. jisung doesn’t break it. neither does minho. and then —

“wait, i thought you were asleep. did you wake up just to remind me of my singular brain cell existence, or…?”

jisung silently applauded himself for rolling over earlier. now he can see the boy’s face, which always helps even if he isn’t sure what the look minho’s giving him means.

“wasn’t sleeping,” is the reply jisung gets. short and to the point. nothing out of the ordinary, but the tone bothers him.

okay, jisung may be barely conscious and too warm, but he’s not an idiot. usually. kinda… anyway, the point is, jisung is prepared to pester minho into telling him what’s wrong. a solid idea, but it could also end in minho just straight-up kicking him out. not so great.

it’s a good thing he doesn’t have to say anything else, thanks to minho muttering. oh, alliteration! fancy. maybe his incessant inner monologuing was evolving after all.

“i was thinking. you, on the other hand, fell asleep. you snore so fucking loudly.”

jisung’s affronted grumbling went ignored. that didn’t stop the blond from going on a mini-rant about how he did not snore and, really, minho was the worst for speaking in his sleep so even if jisung snored (he didn’t, but if he did) they’d be on even ground —

“i love you.”

“oh.”

“yeah, that’s all.”

“like… a best friend?”

“nah.”

“oh. cool.”

they lapse into another silence. minho closes his eyes, arm still tucked around jisung’s waist from their position before. jisung blinks owlishly, lips pursed together in contemplation (and shock. a lot of shock. it’s, like, 90% shock).

oh, minho’s sexuality isn’t the surprise. jisung could recall the name of nearly every boy minho had idly called cute or had dated. not to be, like, weird or anything! he wasn’t even sure why he remembered jackson from the ice cream parlour or that jeon kid from dance. he just did.

jisung’s memory had never been the greatest (see: his grades in literature class), but some things were impossible to forget —

like finding minho curled up in the corner of his room, shoulders heaving as he sobbed like the world had tumbled to the ground. 

jisung knew minho. knew him better than jisung knew himself, sometimes. it had always been like that, ever since jisung was four and minho was six and one of them had fallen off the swing (minho says it was jisung, jisung says it was minho).

jisung had been thirteen when minho — unshakeable, confident, unbothered minho — asked him if being gay was alright. minho was fifteen when jisung — wonderful, enthusiastic, wide-eyed jisung — had shrugged and said it wouldn’t change their friendship.

(well, to be exact, jisung had said ‘best friend forevership’ but that was a mouthful as it was).

that marked the first and last time minho had cried in front of jisung. it marked the first and last time jisung had questioned his own sexuality.

not because he’d come to a decision, but because he’d been kinda hungry at the time and settled on deciding later. ‘later’ never really came. no big deal, though. did it matter? jisung didn’t know. he wasn’t the biggest fan of labels — they always got caught on things until he remembered to chop them off.

“should i go home?” he wondered aloud, “i dunno.”

“do you want to?” minho retaliated — not in an annoyed tone, just a tired one. they were both exhausted, in a way, but minho hadn’t slept as long as jisung had.

“i said i dunno.”

minho opens his eyes again, blinking slowly as they readjust to the hazy afternoon glow. the sun is beginning to set, golden rays washing over them like a blanket. the sun seems to be telling them that they’re okay.

jisung is inclined to listen.

there’s an odd look in minho’s eyes. it’s one jisung doesn’t think he has seen before — weird, when you think about how long they’ve known each other. jisung isn’t sure if he likes the foreign mix of vulnerability and something else which he just can’t place.

in the kitchen, minho’s older cousin must have the radio on. a steady beat drifts down the corridor, wriggling through the crack of the not-quite-closed door. jisung has to strain his ears to actually hear the song, but it’s a familiar one.

i love these roads where the houses don’t change —

(and i like you)

— where we can talk like there’s something to say.

(and i like y o u).

i’m glad that we stopped kissing the tar on the highway…

(“i love you,” minho had said with such a casual conviction).

we move in the tree streets.

i’d like it if you —

“maybe you should go,” minho mumbles and jisung is caught more off-guard than he should have been. the look in minho’s eyes is gone.

jisung misses it.

“why?” he retorts, not in the aggressive manner minho seemed to have been expecting, “mrs lee said i could stay for as long as i wanted.”

“leave my mother’s bias towards you out of this,” minho grumbles, flicking jisung on the forehead, “alright, stay if you really wanna. not my business.”

“okay, rude. i should be everyone’s business.”

just like that, the tension bleeds out of the room. outside, the sky begins to change colour. fiery gold to soft orange to inky blue. minho’s cousin has changed the radio station about five times and jisung wonders if it’s polite to tell her to shut it off if she’s going to be so indecisive. 

probably not.

somewhere along the way, minho has fallen asleep again. above them, the fan whirs gently. the heat of the day has receded into a less oppressive presence. the white noise blankets the two boys tangled on the too-small-bed, muffling their rapid heartbeats.

“minho,” jisung tries, “are you awake?”

(he knows he isn’t. the lack of reply isn’t a shock).

“i think i love you too.”

(i t h i n k i love you).

it isn’t like a cheap tv show, where it turns out that minho has been awake the whole time. there’s no tearful confession scene or dramatic gasp. minho keeps on sleeping, and jisung is left to wonder if he should’ve said something when minho was awake.

later on, when he’s lying in his own bed, he’ll think about how it could’ve gone. he’ll imagine minho grabbing his wrist, telling him to stay and to talk about what he said.

at the end of summer, they’ll walk into school with their hands intertwined, matching heartbeats guarding them from the cold autumn air.

it doesn’t happen like that.

it happens like this:

minho calls him the next day, mumbling something about forgetting what he said yesterday. jisung stays quiet, let’s himself believe minho regrets it, let’s minho call them ‘just friends’. minho takes jisung’s silence as acceptance and rejection all at once and hangs up.

jisung is sixteen. he doesn’t know what heartbreak is, he reckons, ‘cause the media shows heartbreak as crying in your room and eating ice cream 24/7 and not wanting to talk to your ex or whatever.

for one thing, they aren’t exes. they’re best friends who, at some point in time, thought they were in love. honestly, it doesn’t even count. they were sleepy and bored and —

jisung isn’t heartbroken. his distance from minho was completely normal. the older boy would be leaving soon, as it was. he was just getting used to not seeing him everyday. 

(he hadn’t been seeing minho everyday for a long time now).

jisung doesn’t eat ice cream 24/7 because jackson from the ice cream parlour talks to minho a lot more than he used to and it makes jisung feel funny.

(the way minho actually replies to jackson now also makes him feel funny).

jisung cries at everything — the ending of infinity war, the little chicks that kept falling out of their nest by his window, stubbing his toe on the edge of his bed — but he didn’t cry over minho.

did minho cry over him?

did he cry over whispered confessions?

over the empty seat at the lunch table, over the awkward nods in the hallway, over the ‘who’s this?’ everytime they texted?

jisung didn’t think so. it didn’t seem very ‘lee minho’ of him. then again, it wasn’t very ‘han jisung’ to cut someone off without a word.

it felt like he was doing everything backwards. maybe that’s why he texts minho, just before they break for summer once more.

(it’s been a whole school year without him).

‘how have you been?’

god, it sounds pathetic — it sounds like jisung wasn’t the one to call an end to their friendship over something so trivial.

there’s no reply, and he doesn’t try again.


End file.
